We Know Spreading Gossip Is Wrong But Is Listening to Gossip a Sin?

This is a meditation on LISTENING TO GOSSIP to be used when praying the Rosary. For each decade, read the meditation and then pray one Our Father, ten Hail Mary's and one Glory Be. 

LISTENING TO GOSSIP

MEDITATION FOR THE FIRST DECADE

Sitting among the scoffers

Speaking Gossip is a terrible sin. But just as bad is passively listening to gossip. 

The Psalms are the official prayers of God’s people. And what are the first words of this incredible collection of prayers? What is the very beginning of the very first psalm? It’s this, “Happy the man who never follows the advice of the wicked, or walks in the way that sinners take, or sits and listens to scoffers.”

Scoffers are gossipers. The first Psalm is telling us that it’s not enough to avoid evil action or avoid evil words. We’re also supposed to avoid listening to evil speech, don’t listen to gossip.

For practical purposes, this means it’s not enough to refrain from gossiping yourself. You’re supposed to fight against even listening to gossip Which can be a lot more difficult.

While meditating on this, pray one Our Father, ten Hail Mary's and one Glory Be...

MEDITATION ON THE SECOND DECADE

What Listening to Gossip does to you

Speaking gossip is an active attack or at least a distortion of the truth about someone else. But listening to gossip warps the way you yourself think about others.

One of the sins against the eighth commandment listed by the Catechism is the vice of “Rash Judgment” – which is where you think the worst of people. The Catechism (#2478) states:

“To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way: Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. and if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.”

Listen closely…it is our moral obligation to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, to think the best of folks, speak well of everyone, or just shut up. 

And listening to gossip will make it harder and harder to fulfill that obligation.

While meditating on this, pray one Our Father, ten Hail Mary's and one Glory Be...

MEDITATION ON THE THIRD DECADE

What listening to gossip does to the gossiper

The person who gossips to you is nearly always your friend. The person you listen to gossip from is often trying to please you with the gossip. In other words, the person who is sinning in this way is nearly always a friend who is offering their sin to you. And when you listen to gossip, you accept it. 

Imagine a good friend decided to walk across hot coals or slash themselves with a knife, all just for your entertainment. Would you just sit there, smiling, while they ruined their bodies for your pleasure? Wouldn’t you say, “No, stop! Please, I honestly am not enjoying this. I don’t like seeing you hurt yourself.”

We’d try to prevent a friend from hurting himself or herself physically for our entertainment, so why wouldn’t we also do everything we could to prevent a friend from hurting himself or herself spiritually for our entertainment?

Refusing to listen to gossip isn’t just a requirement for your own purity of heart or for the sake of a third party’s reputation. Not listening to gossip is for the sake of the friend who is spreading the gossip. 

While meditating on this, pray one Our Father, ten Hail Mary's and one Glory Be...

MEDITATION ON THE FOURTH DECADE

What can you do?

So what can you do to avoid passively listening to, and so indirectly encouraging, gossip?

Well, there’s basically about three options:

1. The first thing you can do is defend the person who is being gossiped about. Find something good to say about the victim, correct a falsehood, or just say we should try to give so-and-so the benefit of the doubt, because maybe what’s being said just isn’t true.  This not only counteracts the evil that’s already been spoken, but it discourages the gossiper from continuing.
2. Secondly, you can change the topic. This is kind of difficult to do, and it really helps if you’ve already put together a good stock of acceptable conversational subjects to bring up ahead of time so that you don’t have to think of them on the spot.
3. Or you can remove yourself from the conversation. You can walk away. And, if there’s somebody who just doesn’t stop gossiping, and who leads you into that sin yourself whenever the two of you get together, well, in that case, it might be necessary to avoid that person for a while. Not because you’re better than the gossiper but because you are too weak to resist the temptation.

None of these options are easy, but if you don’t want to kill your own soul or watch your friend kill theirs, then you’re going to have to strategize on how best to avoid getting in that situation. Because nobody ever said virtue was easy.

While meditating on this, pray one Our Father, ten Hail Mary's and one Glory Be...

MEDITATION ONTHE FiFTH DECADE

Do not speak of these things… bring them to the light

Gossip is where we talk about and listen to bad things about people when we have no business talking about such things or listening to them. So what should we do when we hear about bad things? When we hear of scandals or misfortunes or shameful deeds done in secret? We shouldn’t talk about it. We should pray about it.

We should offer those poor people up to Christ, the light, and ask Him to take care of them. Because He knows what’s going on with them. And He can help them. And He can, if we ask Him to, give us the grace to stop maliciously spreading and listening to gossip about them.

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